


Hazel's Hair

by Vikingfangirl23



Category: Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard - Rick Riordan, RIORDAN Rick - Works, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Black Character(s), Black Joy, Blitzen's Best, Blitzstone is canon fight me, Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Happy Ending, Hazel Levesque-centric, Horseback Riding, Mention of Racism, Post-Canon, Shapeshifting, The Chase Space, hairstyling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-15 02:35:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29926611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vikingfangirl23/pseuds/Vikingfangirl23
Summary: Hazel is spending her 16th summer at the Chase Space in Boston. A regular visit with Blitz at his shop turns into a hairstyling extravaganza which turns into deeper exploration of her past and how she wants to move past it. With a little help from T.J., Frank, and Nico, she begins to see herself as more than the girl who cheated death.(Featuring happy, peaceful days at the Chase Space and cameos by Samirah, Alex, Magnus, Hearth.)
Relationships: Blitzen & Hazel Levesque, Hazel Levesque & Thomas Jefferson Jr. (Magnus Chase), Hazel Levesque/Frank Zhang, Nico di Angelo & Hazel Levesque
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> This may turn into a series of canon-compliant friendship-centered futurefics set at the Chase Space because I adore Boston and the concept of demigods using their special abilities to help mortals. I have so many headcanons about how Norse, Roman, and Greek demigods would interact with each other! Maybe I'll reread the Kane Chronicles and get Carter and Sadie up in here too… Anyway, enjoy your wholesome Hazel fic!

Hazel was enjoying Boston's heat. It rose from the blacktops in waves and reflected off of the skyscrapers on Berkeley street, wrapping around her. It wasn't nearly as hot as New Orleans had been, especially this early in the day, but it still reminded her of the good parts of her birthplace. Seward and even Camp Jupiter never got hot enough to feel like her original home. Maybe Boston was the place she would end up living eventually, once her remaining years of military service at Camp Jupiter were over. 

Like most days, Frank had started the walk to Blitzen's Best with her, but he got a little sidetracked when a kangaroo hopped towards him, balanced on its tail, and kicked him in the chest with both feet. If Hazel hadn't known that it was just Alex shapeshifting, she probably would have panicked. Luckily, Frank was getting used to being attacked by random animals. With ease, he caught himself before hitting the ground, turned into a dingo, and ran after the kangaroo. These multi-species tag games had started small, but a month into their summer in Boston, they had become hours-long affairs that ranged over the whole city. Alex exhausted Frank, but Hazel could see that he loved the challenge. He was getting much more comfortable changing form.

Little mineral gifts from history popped up in her tracks as she walked, and she tucked them all safely in her pockets. The number 9 bus would have shortened the trip, but Hazel was beginning to enjoy collecting gems and metals while walking daily from her temporary apartment in South Boston towards the shop on Newbury Street. 

As she walked, Hazel's mind turned over the fond memories from her first month in Boston and anticipation for the month ahead. Although being praetors was, of course, the opportunity of a lifetime, she thought that choosing to take Frank and spend the summer interning at the Chase Space was the best decision she had made in years. Two of their finest legionnaires were running camp on an interim basis, and Hazel and Frank had time to practice things like shapeshifting and horseback riding and collecting jewels instead of spending all of their time on politics. It was a rest. It was a relief.

When Hazel arrived, Blitzen's Best was closed and the shop owner was nowhere to be found, so she used her key to let herself in through the back door. Being in the quiet, shadowy shop without Blitz always felt a bit like trespassing, but it also felt like an invitation to dress up. 

Gently, tentatively, Hazel unwrapped a dark teal scarf from around a mannequin and folded it around her neck. She looked at herself in one of the full-length mirrors, twirling for effect. Only then did she notice that the ends of the scarf were embroidered with the tiny crystals she had found and given to Blitz the week before. She smiled. Her precious gems were always made better by Blitzen's handiwork.

The back door opened and shut again.

"Hi, Hazel!" Blitz called out.

"Hi! I love what you did with the crystals!" 

"Oh, that scarf practically made itself. When you gave me those, I knew they were going to be gorgeous. The beauty was already there." Blitz smiled broadly. "Now, what are we working with today?"

They sat at a small work table and Hazel emptied her pockets. As she spoke, Blitz poked through the haul and began sorting by size and color. "I think I've already gotten nearly all of the gold on my route, so there's more stainless steel and platinum today in terms of metal. Then on the gems side… "

After Hazel's report came the fun part: Blitz's designing brainstorm. Hazel became more of an audience than a helper as Blitz flitted around the shop pairing colors and patterns with stones. His sketchbook was filling up with designs for how Hazel's "donations" could be worked into the clothes he already had in his head. Time and time again she tried to ask him what he needed, explaining that she could probably find specific things to suit his requests, but he always denied her. "I like the element of surprise," he said.

Blitz eventually stopped talking in complete sentences and dove into working on what seemed to be a large cape with rubies on the hem. Hazel still had some time before she had to head to the Common to meet the others for horseback riding, so she took the teal scarf back to the mirror and tied it around her head with a knot on her forehead like her mother used to do.

In New Orleans, her mother used a flat iron to straighten Hazel's hair. She never let her cut it short, and she never let her wear it natural. Straight or artificially curled hair were the only two options for girls at St. Agnes Academy.

When Hazel first arrived at Camp Jupiter after Nico brought her back to life, her hair was actually one of the first things that she thought about. It was silly, and irrational, but the few Black people she saw at camp all seemed to wear their hair loose or cropped short or in long braids. Hazel's second life had far more freedom than the first. She thought, for a moment, about asking the others for advice, but her outcast status in the Fifth Cohort quickly crushed that dream. Hazel was on her own. 

When she was on furlough, she bought some hair care products at a CVS in San Francisco that seemed good enough, but she had barely begun to experiment with them and figure out how to care for her hair worn natural and loose when the quest began. On the Argo II, she ran out of time to think about anything but survival. And even after the first quest, life didn't let up for a while. 

It was only now, in the summer following her third year at Camp Jupiter, that she and Frank had felt ready to pass over praetorship to two other senators for the summer so that they could connect with the Chase Space. It was the first time she felt ready to rest. She was finally safe enough to stare at herself in the mirror and wish that her hair looked different.

Hazel checked the time and tapped Blitz's shoulder on her way out. "I've got to get to the Common for horseback riding," she said.

"Tell them all I say hello! I'll be over for lunch later." Blitz said. 

Hazel said goodbye, but she wasn't sure if he heard her: the sewing machine was making a racket and the cape seemed to be taking up all of his attention.

Halfway to the Common, a peregrine falcon zipped overhead, followed by a dragon that she recognized as Frank. Hazel used the magic Hecate taught her to twist a little extra Mist around the two shapeshifters so that they didn't cause any heart attacks or car accidents in their little game of tag.

The Mist also came in handy with explaining how three horses just seemed to wander into Boston Common right on time for riding lessons. Hazel consciously shielded the horses from the mortals so that they saw a bunch of kids on bicycles instead of horses. 

Arion was Hazel's demonstration partner; no one else was allowed to ride him. The smaller kids took turns on Beatrice (the name Alex had chosen for her pony-form) and the older kids rode Fai (Frank's name when he was an American quarter horse instead of a human). When Hazel arrived at the Common, all three horses were standing together with Magnus and the eight kids who had chosen to come to the lesson, ready to go. They used two old sets of saddles and harnesses that Hazel had gotten from Camp Jupiter and stored at the Chase Space. The kids took turns pulling the wagon, loaded up with horseback riding supplies, from the mansion on beacon street to the wide open green of the Common where they rode.

Hazel saddled the horses, checked the first two kids' helmets, and helped them mount, using a bench as mounting blocks. After riding once or twice a week for the month that Hazel had been offering lessons, the kids were getting very comfortable. It certainly helped that Fai and Beatrice were super calm and well-behaved, but as Hazel watched them circle the Common at varying paces, she was proud to see that they would be able to hold their own in a variety of riding contexts. Maybe she would start sending them through obstacle courses with tight turns, or having them try small jumps the next week.

Each set of kids spent about 20 minutes riding, then switched out with someone else. Everyone who wasn't on a horse passed the time with Magnus. Out of the corner of her eye, Hazel saw them playing foursquare on the sidewalk, throwing a frisbee, and drawing with chalk. Magnus's magic drifted over the children, unclenching their tense muscles and calming their racing minds. That was part of the appeal of attending Chase Space activities like horseback riding: not only did the kids get physical protection, they had the feeling of peace and calm that Magnus exuded. The ever-present anxiety of having no housing or unstable housing drifted into the background for a few hours, so that they could focus on just being kids.

When everyone had taken their turn riding, Hazel unsaddled Fai and Beatrice. The kids helped her pack the saddles, harnesses, and helmets safely back into the wagon to return to the Chase Space. With her back to the group, she carefully drew a snack of gold coins from the ground and fed it to Arion. He nickered affectionately, and all three horses galloped away.

Alex and Frank were in human form, helping Hearth set up the lunch buffet, when the horseback riding crew returned to the Chase Space. There were twenty-odd guests, ages 8 to 18. Some stayed overnight, while some only came to the mansion during the day for safety and activities. The demigods sat down with them to eat, spread throughout the kitchen, dining room, foyer, and sitting room. The small groups and laughter reminded Hazel of Camp Jupiter. For a moment, she wished she were there.

After lunch, the team at the Chase Space split up into their afternoon activity groups. Hearth and Frank took a group back to the Common to try out some basic archery with hand-me-down rubber-tip arrows from Camp Half-Blood. Annabeth and Magnus sat up in the library tutoring the kids who wanted and needed help preparing to go back to school in the fall. As soon as the plates were cleared, Alex turned the common spaces on the ground floor of the mansion into a pottery studio for all of the kids who wanted to play with clay. 

As usual, Alex needed no help leading her group. The kids dove into their work, smashing air bubbles out of lumps of clay and then rolling them into flat circles and coils to make bowls and mugs. Blitz wandered over to Hazel. She leaned in the doorway watching, and they were content to just rest.

"Well, I might go back to the shop," Blitz said. "That cape needs a waistcoat to match."

Hazel tried to lift her head to walk him to the door, but the rough wooden corner of the old doorframe caught on her hair, tugging painfully. "Agh!"

"Can I help?" Blitz asked. Hazel nodded, and his deft fingers disentangled her hair from the splinters in the doorframe.

"Thanks," Hazel said. Her face grew warm. How useless did you have to be to get your hair caught on a door frame when you were barely even moving?

"Don't worry about it. Do you mind telling me how you're taking care of your hair?" Blitz asked carefully.

"Um." Hazel flushed even more. It was as if he'd heard her thoughts about her hair back in the shop that morning. "I just kind of… wash it. And I put conditioner. And I brush it. I really don't know what I'm doing," she confessed.

Blitz smiled. "That's fine," he said. "You can do whatever you want. But if you want, I could do your hair."

"Yeah?" Hazel asked. "What would you do to it?"

"I'd start with moisturizer," Blitz said. "We keep lots of hair products right here at the house for guests to use. It's no trouble. Then we could look at different ways to put your hair up in some kind of protective style, so that it gets a break from being exposed all the time."

"No flat iron?" Hazel asked. She winced at the memory of her mother accidentally singing her scalp. "No chemical relaxer?"

Blitz laughed. "No. I mean, we do have those, but we don't have to use them."

"Great," Hazel said. Now that she thought about it, there was no one she trusted better with her hair -- or any part of her appearance, for that matter -- than Blitz. "You know what? Let's do it."

They subtly signaled to Alex that they were going to leave and went up to the master bathroom. As Blitz had said, the room was stocked with hair products, personal care items, period care supplies, and more. Some of it was even compiled into sets in little bags that someone could take with them when they left the house. Blitz opened up a cabinet under the sink to reveal a shelf full of books about puberty, hygiene, and most importantly, hair care. Hazel felt like every day she noticed something else at the Chase Space that made her feel even more grateful that it existed.

Blitz picked out a book called Chocolate Hair, Vanilla Care and flipped through the pages. "Let's look at some pictures to get an idea of what you want," Blitz said. They sat on the wide edge of the bathtub together paging through it. Hazel had seen most of the styles in the pictures before, on people she passed by in Boston or in Camp Jupiter but never spoke to. The idea that those styles could belong to her too was new. The idea that she could have anything other than all of her hair down or all of her hair wrestled into a scrunchie was new.

They were both lost in the book when two sets of feet clattered down the stairs and stopped at the door of the bathroom.

"What're you two doing in there?" Samirah asked. The edge of her hijab was singed, and she seemed to have lost a boot on her way to the Chase Space.

"We're doing Hazel's hair!" Blitz exclaimed.

"Oh, neat. If you want scarf tips, or you want to borrow any of my wraps, let me know," she said.

"Um, are you okay?" Hazel asked tentatively.

"Yeah, we just had an issue with the squirrel." 

Blitz nodded as if this made all the sense in the world. Hazel had met Samirah and all of the members of Floor 19 at least once in passing, but she still didn't fully understand the world of the Norse gods. Getting enough information on the Romans and Greeks to survive her own life had been enough of a challenge.

T.J. stumbled into the doorway beside Samirah. "Gods, I hate rodents," he gasped. He must have come from the same quest as his friend.

Samirah clapped him on the shoulder, which didn't seem to make him feel any better. "Well, good luck with the hair," she said to Blitz and Hazel. "I'm going to see Alex, and then I've got to get back home."

"Of course. Hey, T.J., why don't you sit down with us for a minute and catch your breath," Blitz suggested. T.J. nodded and sat heavily onto the lid of the toilet.

"Why do we suddenly need to do Hazel's hair in the middle of the afternoon?" T.J. asked.

Blitz looked at Hazel for her answer.

"Um," she started. Real smooth. "It's been… a long time since anyone has helped me with my hair. It's been really hard coming from a different time period, where there were different rules." She hadn't planned on telling them everything, but it all spilled out: from Marie Levesque's mandatory relaxing to going natural as soon as she arrived in the present with no advice or direction to being too exhausted to change that for three full years.

"I can relate," T.J. said when she was done. "When I was alive, I just kept my hair nice and short and it wasn't so bad, but after I died, I tried to keep up with the trends in the mortal world. Lots of us do. I wore a conk, I wore a Jheri curl. Those nasty chemicals hurt. It looked good, at least in my opinion, but it hurt so much."

"I'm glad I was born more recently," Blitz said. "I've just been cycling through a fade, natural curls, and protective twists. But don't worry, I've styled hair as long as yours before," he reassured Hazel.

They returned to flipping through the book, all three commenting on the images they liked best.

"Okay, so I'm feeling like braids," Hazel said at last. "No extensions, just braids. I honestly like cloth wraps just as much, but… I don't want to look too much like my mom. I'm not ready for that yet."

"Fair," Blitz laughed. "Which type of braids?"

"These goddess braids," Hazel said. "A little asymmetrical and curvy, but still pretty simple. Is that okay?"

"Of course!" Blitz said. "If we're really going to do this, I want to do it right. Before I can put in long-lasting protective braids, I need you to treat your hair with some specific products to make sure it stays strong and moisturized while it's in the braids. I'll set up a bag and write out instructions."

"So… tomorrow, then? In the morning? I'm teaching art in the afternoon."

"Sounds perfect."

"I'm free then, too!" T.J. said. "Is it alright if I hang around for moral support?"

"Of course," said Hazel. "Thank you both for getting so invested in this. I'm getting kind of excited."

The excitement lasted all through the rest of the work day at the Chase Space, through walking home with Frank, through dinner, right up until it was time to actually start wrangling her hair. 

Hazel brushed her hair once or twice a week without fail, so it wasn't like the detangling process was new. In fact, the flexible brush and detangling spray Blitz had picked out for her were much better than her usual products. But she had always detangled her hair solely for the purpose of it staying healthy and looking decent, not for it to be styled and braided by someone whose opinion of her was a little bit of a really big deal. She took yet another break from brushing just to breathe in and out and clean off the brush. The pressure was on, and it was getting to her.

"Hazel?" Frank called.

"Yeah?"

"Can I come in?"

Hazel frowned. After living together for two years, she and Frank had worked out the times and spaces where they kept their distance from each other. It was rare for him to interrupt her when she was clearly having an extensive style session in the bathroom with the door closed. 

"Sure," she said, and opened the door. "Something wrong?"

"Uh, I went to the basement to put in a load of laundry, and I found this." Frank handed her a chunk of gold that must have weighed at least two pounds. "What's upsetting you?"

Hazel sat heavily on the lid of the toilet, clutching the gold so tightly that it molded to fit the shape of her hands. "Blitz offered to braid my hair tomorrow."

Frank leaned in the doorframe. "Isn't that… good? I thought you loved Blitz. And he makes literally everything he touches look great."

"I know! He's so nice!" Hazel groaned. "But my hair isn't! I have been brushing for an hour -- and this is only the first of several rounds of putting different stuff in it -- and I'm so ready to give up."

"Well, you could tell him you don't want to go through with it, and I know he would respect that" Frank said evenly. "But it really seems like you do want to go through with it. So why don't I help you?"

Hazel blinked. "Really? It's kind of a mess."

"Yeah, just tell me what to do. My hair could not be more different from yours, and I am extremely underqualified, but, you know. You care about this. So I want to help."

"Aw!" Hazel stood on her tiptoes to give her boyfriend a hug.

It took a moment to find a way to sit together in the bathroom that didn't cause Frank to elbow the sink with every brushstroke. He began by brushing through the areas near Hazel's face that she had already gone through, just getting a feel for the bendy brush and her thick hair.

"So this is the hard part," he said, finally beginning to tease the tangles out of the hair just above the back of Hazel's neck. "This is hard enough having direct access to this part of your head. If you were brushing this out, you'd tire out your shoulders in no time."

"Or I would just get really, really buff shoulders," Hazel quipped.

"Right, right, of course. You're very buff."

Hazel laughed. Frank was gentler with her than she was with herself. It was soothing. "This reminds me of being very small. Before anything really bad had happened with my mom. She always talked about fixing my kitchen when she brushed my hair. She made it rhyme: fixin' the kitchen."

"That's so sweet," Frank said.

They filled another half hour with little happy memories, little stories like that one, ranging from New Orleans to Frank's small, Canadian hometown to Seward, Alaska. The moments of silence in the gaps between speaking felt just as good. 

When Hazel was satisfied that her hair was all detangled, she and Frank both got their hands covered in the coconut oil Blitz had picked out and used it to coat every strand of hair, from the tips all the way to her scalp. "It smells so good," Frank sighed. "Can we do this more often?"

"Sure, I bet we could both learn to braid," said Hazel. "And I think you should grow out your hair long enough that I can style it for you. Maybe some nice French braids? Maybe some hairspray? Maybe a perm?" She laughed as Frank grew more and more visibly upset at the thought. "Don't worry. It's perfect the way it is."

"You are, too," Frank said. 

"I hope it turns out well," Hazel murmured, looking in the mirror at the white-coated, lumpy mess that was her hair mid-treatment.

"Of course it will," Frank said firmly. "You're always gorgeous. I'm excited to see you be a new kind of gorgeous. If you like it, you can do it again, and if you don't like it, you can go straight back to being the type of gorgeous that you already were."

Hazel's smile filled her face. "Thank you, Frank. That means a lot to me."

"Of course." Frank pecked her on the cheek and they both grinned at each other in the mirror. "What's next?"

"Sleeping cap!" Hazel gathered her coconut-covered hair in her hands and tucked it into a cap to prevent the oil from getting all over the bed and pillows. "Let's go to bed."


	2. 2

Hazel woke up to the screeching and chattering of many birds. She absently wondered for a moment what they were saying to each other. Magnus, who could understand bird chatter, often complained that they were repetitive and shallow. Maybe Hazel was better off just resting in ignorant bliss. For a moment, she considered pulling the sheet over her head and trying to fall back to sleep, but then she became aware of the sticky feeling on her scalp. There was more work to be done on her hair before she was ready to go to the Chase Space to see Blitz.

Careful not to wake Frank, Hazel headed to the bathroom to wash the coconut oil out of her hair in the shower. She let conditioner sit in her hair for half an hour while eating breakfast, then got back in the shower to wash it all out with cold water. Without even being asked, Frank came back to his spot behind her in the bathroom and detangled the back and bottom of her hair.

"Thank you," Hazel said softly.

"My pleasure. Besides, it's good practice. Some of the kids at the Chase Space have gotten really attached to me. Especially with the younger ones… it's good if I know how to do stuff like this. To help them out."

Hazel pursed her lips. It seemed like Frank was inviting her to push a little bit, to find out exactly what he was thinking and feeling about their future. "You really like working here in Boston? You don't feel like we're missing out on being at Camp Jupiter?"

"Not at all," Frank said without hesitation. "I love camp, but it's great here, too. I love teaching archery and self-defense. I love being a horse. I love the nerdy games when Nico comes to visit. I love playing tag with Alex."

"So, you'd do this again? Some future summer?"

Frank paused. "If you'd do it with me, yeah. We could do it again."

"Okay." Hazel let her smile take over her face. "I think I'd like that."

\----------

Blitz gently ran through Hazel's hair with a wide, flexible brush, getting a feel for how thick it was. "You did a great job, Hazel. Your hair feels a lot more hydrated than yesterday, and there are very few tangles left," he said.

"Thanks. Frank helped."

"Oh, good. In my humble opinion, that's a mark of a great partner. One of the moments I first realized Hearth was a keeper was when he finally got good enough to do all of my twists himself."

"Aw!"

T.J. showed up carrying the ancient CD player and milk carton of CDs from downstairs in the common room. "Let's make this feel like a real salon!" he said. "What music should I put on?" T.J. asked.

Blitz took a break from parting Hazel's hair so that she could flip through the CDs. "I'm so out of touch with music these days. Here! Louis Armstrong. That's the only artist I recognize."

T.J. popped the CD in and skipped through a few tracks to the one he wanted to hear. "I see treeeees so green, red roses too..." he sang along horribly.

"I've never heard this song," Hazel said.

"Huh. I think I first heard it on a super old Sesame Street when I was little. Did you get Sesame Street in Valhalla?" Blitz asked T.J.

"Yes! That must be how I know it."

"I missed all of that," Hazel said softly. She flipped open the CD case to read the liner notes. "I missed like three-quarters of Louis Armstrong's career, I guess."

Blitz rested a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry, we can make up for lost time. You pick all the music today."

"And then tomorrow, we're listening to pop radio. Have you listened to Lady Gaga? Beyonce?" T.J. asked.

"Uh..."

Hazel was content to let T.J. 's discussion of how music had changed in the 60-odd years of history she missed wash over her. The feeling of Blitz's gentle fingers in her hair and the familiarity of Louis Armstrong's voice surrounded her with a feeling like home.

Blitz used a plastic comb with sharp teeth to divide Hazel's hair into sections with clean, straight parts. T.J. held up the picture from the book for Blitz to refer back to. Hazel peeked up at herself in the mirror, stunned by how different the shape of her head looked when it wasn't covered by her loose hair. Mostly she looked down at her hands, fiddling with the gold that she had summoned the night before.

"What's your favorite food, Hazel?" Blitz asked when T.J. reached a stopping place in his music history lecture.

"Gumbo," Hazel could tell from T.J.'s face that (being from Boston and Valhalla) he hadn't heard of it. "It's a thick soup that I had all the time in New Orleans, where I grew up."

"New Orleans! Like in The Princess and the Frog!"

"What?"

"The Disney movie! The lovely and hardworking Tiana wants to open her own restaurant in New Orleans but she doesn't have the money so she has to go on this whole quest involving a lot of magic and both her and her love interest getting turned into frogs but she's super brave so at the end, she gets her restaurant!" T.J. gave his whole explanation in one excited breath.

"I don't love it when shows turn their Black characters into animals, because then we miss out on some of the Black-people-kicking-ass-onscreen, but it's still a nice movie overall," Blitz added.

"Let's watch it here this weekend! You can teach us how to make gumbo and we'll eat it while we watch." T.J. was bouncing in his seat.

"I don't know if I could find the ingredients here in Boston," Hazel said.

"Oh, I bet we could get somebody at Camp Half-Blood to use some magic to get you anything you need and fly it up here. Plenty of people are commuting pretty regularly," said Blitz.

"You spend entirely too much time working at Camp Jupiter," T.J. huffed. "What's the last movie you saw?"

"Uh… Dumbo," Hazel said.

"The elephant one?"

"Yeah, right when it came out."

"Was that in 1942?" T.J. asked disapprovingly.

"1941, actually," Hazel said. "There were no colored theaters in Seward. I remember because I wanted to see Casablanca, but they wouldn't let me in."

"Oh, dear lord, you haven't seen a movie since desegregation. You haven't seen a movie this century!" T.J. groaned. "So it is mandatory that you watch The Princess and the Frog with us. And after you see it, you're going to draw even more than you already do and become the head animator on the sequel!"

"There's a sequel?"

"When you make it, there will be!"

Hazel laughed. "Woah, there, T.J. Your dreams might be a little bigger than is realistic."

"Why? You're super talented!"

"I'm super not, and besides, I'm a demigod! I'm a praetor! I'm bound to military service until I'm 23, then I'm expected to stay in New Rome for the rest of my life. I'm not supposed to do anything else." Hazel could feel anxiety bubbling in her chest and making her voice shake. She took a breath, then continued. "When I died and spent so many decades in Asphodel, I thought I had done everything that I was going to do. Even now, as a praetor, it's easy to sit back and think that hey, this is the most important I will ever be. This is the most I will ever do."

"But there are so many different kinds of doing things!" T.J. exclaimed. "You've become our friend, a friend of everyone here at the Chase Space this summer. You may not think that's as impressive or important as being praetor of a whole legion or whatever, but I think it is. This is going to sound so cheesy and so stupid, but you can be anything. I've been kicking around for, like, 170 years and I'm still finding new things to do and be all the time."

"But like… what if I peaked in my wild questing days? What if it's all downhill from here?"

"Hazel." Blitz let go of her hair so that he could kneel in front of her and make eye contact. "My peak was certainly not in my wild Ragnarok-preventing days. My peak so far has been opening my shop. And I know that if that's ever not enough for me, I'll find something else to do that will be even better. So will you."

Hazel swallowed. She nodded. Blitz's words were just forceful enough and just sincere enough to make her feel safe.

"You mortal demigods are so weird. I say that with love, of course," T.J. said. "But you all seem to have crises in your late teens when you realize that you might actually live to adulthood."

"Yeah, I guess that's it," Hazel said softly. "I might need to make a plan for what to do after I leave the legion. I might actually live to adulthood."

"Crazy, right?" Blitz returned to his work on her hair. "Well, the good news is, I'm almost done. You're going to have a whole arsenal of incredible hairstyles to wear for the rest of your long and happy life."

Arsenal was a good word for it, Hazel thought. The braids felt like a new type of armor covering her head, keeping her hair safe and strong. It was a transformation, to be sure, but not a painful one. Blitz never tugged. At the very end, he used a newly-opened toothbrush and a little gel to style her baby hairs in delicate swoops and swirls that framed her face.

"All done."

"Oh, my goodness. Thank you, Blitz." Hazel looked long and hard in the mirror. The braids and the parts that divided them were even, smooth, and heavy down her back. She looked like a different person: older, more adult, but also shorter without the full volume of her hair. Her jaw looked sharper and for the first time in a long time, she could see her ears. They felt bare, but in a way that she could get used to. Maybe she would buy some nice earrings, now that they would actually be visible. She smiled and her smile made her look exactly like herself.

"I found this gold on my walk here this morning," Hazel said to Blitz. "I know I always give you gold anyway, but I hope it could be like a thank-you present."

"Hmm." Blitz looked at her, then at the gold, then at her again. "I know exactly what I want to use it on. Can you shape this into twenty or so little rings, about wide enough to go on my pinky?"

Hazel concentrated on the gold and molded it into the shapes Blitz asked for. He took them back, one by one, and she felt him fiddling with the gold in her hair.

"There. What do you think?"

Hazel lifted her head and looked at herself again in the mirror. The gold was in little cuffs, rough enough that you could tell she'd just made them, but still shining beautifully. It brought out the red-gold highlights in her hair and the warm undertones of her dark brown skin.

"They match your eyes," said T.J. "It looks so good."

"Thank you both so much." Hazel stood so that she could pull them into a hug. "You made my hair look so beautiful."

"Don't be silly," Blitz said. "The beauty was already there."

Hazel hugged him a little tighter.

"Now we have to show Frank!" T.J. said. They abandoned their brushes, hair products, and CD player in the bathroom and wandered off to find the son of Mars.

He was sitting on the front steps, supervising a game of advanced hopscotch that had broken out between three middle schoolers with sidewalk chalk. The chatter of the kids and the noise of the street faded away when Hazel sat next to him, tense with anticipation over what he would say.

Frank smiled. "I can see why they call them goddess braids. You really do look like a goddess," he said. "Can I touch?"

Hazel nodded and turned so that he could run his hands across the crown of her head. The braids, narrowing as they fell from her shoulders, flowed through his fingers.

"Wow," said Frank. He stepped in and gently kissed Hazel's forehead. "I love you."

Hazel's smile felt too big for her face. "I love you, too."

\----------

After cleaning up all of the styling supplies in the bathroom, Hazel went to the kitchen to help out with making lunch. Magnus sent her back up to the fifth floor to check if the second fridge had any mushrooms, so she was jogging around the stairwell's sharp corners when she nearly knocked into Hearth.

Hearth caught himself, smiled and moved an open hand around his face in a circle. "Beautiful."

Hazel beamed back and signed, "Thank you. Blitz is good." Her hands hovered in the air for a moment and she wished she knew more signs. Hearth flashed another quick smile and moved on down the hall.

She was about to keep going when Nico fell out of the wall in the stairwell, scaring Hazel so much she thought she was going to die all over again, from a heart attack this time.

"Sorry," he wheezed. "I panicked because I thought I was going to be late for Magnus's pizza and fudged the shadow jump a little."

"Nico! You need to be so much more careful with yourself. I swear, I'll tell Will straight away if I think you're overtaxing yourself." Hazel lifted his chin and forced eye contact to make sure her message was received loud and clear.

"Wha- You changed your hair," Nico said.

Hazel's face heated up. Getting positive reactions from Blitz and T.J. and Frank and Hearth had felt nice, but Nico was her brother. He was the first living person she had met who was still in her life, and he was the one she was most certain that she intended to keep in her life permanently. She hadn't realized until that anxious moment, but his opinion mattered… kind of a lot.

"I like it," Nico said, and Hazel started to relax her jaw and shoulders.

"Really?"

"Yes. I mean, you look very different, and it took me a minute to put my finger on the difference. But it's a good one." He furrowed his brow, trying to pick exactly the right words to say what he meant. "You look happy, for one. But you also look older, like you're growing up. You look alive. You look like you belong here, in this time."

"That's… the best compliment. The very best," Hazel said softly. She pulled him in for a tight, long hug.

The two children of the Underworld stayed like that for several minutes, in a house full of demigods, mortals, and einherji, decades from when they were born. 

They were growing up. 

They were alive. 

They belonged there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments are always appreciated :)

**Author's Note:**

> Second (and final) chapter should be out tomorrow-ish.  
> Akumashino on tumblr has great art of Hazel with gold in her braids.  
> Let me know what other Chase Space friendship squads you want to read!


End file.
